How great to finally meet the man her daughter worked for! ‘You never told me that he was so good-looking!’... ‘My daughter loves her job; I can tell because she talks so much about it!’... ‘And Paris...how wonderful that she had the opportunity to go there! She can’t stop talking about it!’
‘You asked me, Mum!’ Alice avoided eye contact with Gabriel but she could feel him simmering with his own curiosity. ‘I talked about Paris because you asked me!’
Her mother had chosen, however, to skirt round that technicality.
‘I’ve intruded,’ Gabriel murmured. Pamela Morgan was an attractive woman, with a frailty that her daughter lacked. Not even the loose-fitting dress or the long, cream cardigan could conceal her good looks. Was that why her daughter was so self-conscious about her appearance? Was there some sort of unspoken rivalry between mother and daughter? And, yet, no; there was clearly a strong bond there.
This was the first time he had ever met any relative of any woman he had slept with, aside from Bethany’s father. Meeting the family had been something he had always heavily discouraged. Now, he was intensely curious, intensely curious to join the dots and make connections—intensely, inexplicably curious just to find out more.
‘You’re not intruding! Is he, Alice?’
‘Well, now that you mention it...’ She caught Gabriel’s eye and noted the wicked gleam of amusement.
‘That’s very kind...may I call you Pamela? Yes? Well, you’re very kind, but I won’t be staying long.’
‘Yes.’ Alice stood up with a wide, false smile. ‘Gabriel has to be on his way. Don’t you, Gabriel? He’s probably got all sorts of plans for the evening.’
‘None,’ Gabriel drawled. He settled down comfortably in the kitchen chair to which he had been ushered. ‘But I will have, if you ladies would allow me to take you both out for a meal...?’ His sharp eyes noted the quick look that was exchanged, and then Pamela Morgan was on her feet, clutching her cardigan tightly around her.
‘You two go out. There’s a lovely little restaurant in the village, just opened...’
‘There is?’ Alice gaped. ‘And, no! We won’t be going anywhere!’ She glared at Gabriel who returned the glare with a comfortable smile of satisfaction.
‘Yes, you will, Alice! I insist. We eat in every single weekend. It will do you good to get out and see the place for a change. Plus, there’s food here for me, and what’s left over I can pop in the freezer. And the weather is so nice at the moment. Such a lovely change from all that rain we’ve been having. Alice, darling, why don’t you go and change, and you two young things can go out and have some fun.’
‘Mum...’
‘If you’re sure, Pamela...’ Gabriel stood up, exuding innate charm. ‘Why don’t you run along, Alice? Change into your glad rags? And, in the meantime, Pamela and I can get to know one another...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALICE FUMED. WHY HAD he shown up on her doorstep? It was utterly out of character for him, but then being dumped was out of character for him as well. Was that why he had said that he couldn’t get her out of his head? Once you stripped that remark down to its bare bones, what you were left with was a man who wanted something of which he had been deprived, whatever the cost.
He was impossible!
She had practically nothing to wear. She didn’t come down to Devon intent on having nights out. Her wardrobe consisted of comfortable clothes to hang around the house in. With a groan of despair, she rummaged through the bottom shelves where clothes from another era had been shoved and forgotten.
Gabriel here, in her mother’s house, felt like an invasion of her privacy. He was seeing where she had lived for years; seeing the photos of her which were liberally scattered throughout the small house; the little drawings she had done which her mother had kept in a box during those long, miserable years when she’d been married, drawings which she’d had framed as soon as she had a house of her own.
He was a billionaire and she couldn’t help wondering what he thought of her mother’s house: too small, not smart enough, filled with mementoes and knickknacks that had cost practically nothing. Everything else, the more expensive stuff, had been sold off when her father had died and the family home sold. Her mother had not wanted to bring any bad memories with her to wherever she chose to put down roots.
Alice wasn’t at all ashamed of where she had lived but it was only human to see your own particular circumstances through the eyes of someone else. In this case, her arrogant, super-rich boss.
She looked around her own bedroom with critical eyes. Nothing had been done to it since she had moved out. It was in good condition, but dated. The wallpaper was old-style floral and the bed and the dressing table harked back to a different era—the era of cheap reproduction furniture that was functional but lacking in style. It had served its purpose and, for the first time, Alice was slightly ashamed that she had not encouraged her mother to do some basic renovations to the house.
Yes, some of what she earned went on paying her mother’s therapist, but there was always enough left over to spend a little on the house.
Her mother, whilst she probably would have been able to afford some of those renovations, would have swept aside the suggestion as being a waste of money. That, like so much else, was a legacy of her past, unhappy life, where money had never been thrown around and where the housekeeping had been frugal.
Eager to get downstairs and curtail whatever conversation Gabriel was having with her mother, Alice showered and changed as fast as she could. The black trousers, which had been folded on the bottom shelf, thankfully still fit; the red jumper might be baggy but its colour had not been diminished in the wash, and at least it looked jollier than the greys, blacks and dark blues that comprised most of the rest of the wardrobe of clothes.
As an afterthought, she applied a light covering of make-up—some mascara, a little blush, some lip gloss.
I couldn’t get you out of my head...
She could feel his remark burning a hole through all her defences, worming its way past her conviction that it was just another example of his arrogance, and she groaned again.
She barged into the kitchen to find Gabriel enjoying a cup of tea and her mother giggling. Giggling! They both looked up as she entered, like a couple of kids found out in a conspiracy. Alice took a few deep breaths, gathering herself and resisting the urge to ask them what, exactly, what so funny.
She had been gone less than forty minutes and they had become best friends!
‘This is all I could find to wear,’ she said ungraciously, and was treated to a wolfish smile from Gabriel.
‘You look lovely, dear. Doesn’t she look lovely, Gabriel? You should wear red more often. It suits you.’
‘It certainly does...’ he murmured. ‘We’re going to an Italian restaurant. Your favourite type of food.’
Pamela looked between them with keen interest. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked with, Alice thought, a complete lack of tact.
‘Oh, I know a great many things about your daughter, Pamela...’
‘Because,’ Alice snapped, ‘when you’re stuck in someone’s company for days on end, you tend to find out superficial things about them. Like what their favourite cuisine is.’
‘Stuck in my company? I got the impression that you rather—’
‘Okay,’ Alice interrupted hurriedly, before something was said that would have her mother’s curiosity spiked even more than it already was. ‘Shall we go? I don’t want to be long, because...’
‘Where will you be staying, Gabriel?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Well, I hadn’t thought ahead.’
‘You’ll save some money if you stay here. The spare bedroom is small but it’s tidy. I use it as a sewing room, but I could just pop my bits and bobs in my sewing box.’
‘Gabriel doesn’t need to save money, Mum. And I’m sure he won’t be staying overnight.’
‘It’s way too late for me to drive back to London,’ Gabriel said thoughtfully. ‘And don’t we all need to save money?’
Alice controlled hysterical laughter. This was the man who travelled first class and only stayed in the finest five-star hotels. She doubted the concept of saving money had ever crossed his radar.
‘It would be rude of me to turn down such a kind invitation.’ He smiled at Pamela, the sort of smile that would have had any woman on the planet eating out of his hands.
‘No,’ Alice inserted firmly. ‘If you really can’t drive back tonight, then I’m sure we can fix you up with a pleasant local hotel. Closer to Exeter, of course, because I’m sure you’ll want to visit Harrisons first thing Monday...’
‘Of course you must stay here, Gabriel. I’ve never seen my daughter as happy and as fulfilled as she has been since she’s started working for you. And if in return you want to buy me a new toaster, well, then it would be downright churlish of me to refuse...’
With which, she shooed them both out of the house.
Head held high, Alice snatched her jacket from the coat hook by the front door and stormed out into the cool darkness. She closed her ears to the friendly banter between Gabriel and her mother and, when the front door had been quietly but firmly shut on them, she turned to him, hands on her hips.
‘How dare you?’
‘How dare I what?’ He guided her towards his black SUV, which had made light work of the journey down.
‘Become best friends with my mother!’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’ He opened the passenger door and steered her into the car.
‘I am not being ridiculous!’ she hissed as soon as he was behind the wheel, starting the engine into throaty life. ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re not glad...no, excited...that I’m here. I can feel it.’
‘I am not...’
Whatever she had been about to say was lost as his mouth hit hers in a crushing, hungry kiss, a kiss he had been waiting for ever since they had returned from Paris and taken up the charade of playing boss-secretary as though nothing had happened between them.
Hand behind the nape of her neck, he pulled her towards him and carried on kissing her, their tongues melding, their bodies yearning for one another.
Alice was giddy from the fierceness of her driven response. Her fingers curled into his hair and she moaned with a mixture of wanting and not wanting, unable to help herself, and hating herself for her weakness.
Finally, he drew back and looked at her.
‘Don’t spin me any yarns about not wanting me,’ he growled. ‘If I were to take you right here, right now, you wouldn’t run screaming from this car. In fact, you’d get that sexy body of yours in all the right positions to have me in you!’
‘That’s not—’
‘It damn well is! Stop running away from the obvious!’
‘I never said you weren’t an attractive man!’ Her lips tingled from where they had been ravished. Her whole body tingled. He was right, he could have her in a heartbeat, and it was a shaming thought. She had spent the past two weeks fighting to maintain a controlled front and in a few seconds he had demolished it like a house of cards. She wanted to sob from frustration.
Gabriel smiled and turned his attention to the road. ‘So...’ He guided the car along the narrow road that led to the village. ‘You’ve never been happier than you are now, working for me. Apparently, I’m an exciting boss.’
‘Is that what my mother told you?’
‘She’s not what I had expected. Somehow I had it in my head that she was more like you.’
‘Meaning what, Gabriel?’
‘Meaning...strong, focused, opinionated. She’s a beautiful woman, Alice, but she seems to live on her nerves.’
‘I don’t like you prying into my personal life.’ But her voice was defeated. He had crossed the last frontier. In the space of a few weeks, she had gone from being the cool, together secretary he had taken on to replace his string of inept temps to a woman who had fallen under his spell, slept with him and now...the woman whose entire life would be laid bare.
‘I’m expressing interest, Alice,’ he said gently. ‘Not prying.’
‘I never asked for your interest.’ She rested her head against the leather head-rest and stared through the window at the blurred, dark countryside racing past her. In a few minutes, they would be in the village. They could actually have walked. On a nice evening, it was a joy to stroll down the country lanes, breathing in the fragrance of the trees and flowers. It was a thirty-minute walk that she had always found therapeutic.
Sure enough, the village twinkled ahead of them, and he found his way easily to the village square, where he parked the car and then killed the engine.
He looked at her for a while. She had the most riveting face he had ever seen, even when that face was turned away from him. He wanted to drag her back into his arms, kiss her all over again, force her out of her coolness, which was unbearable now that he had seen another side to her.
He was baffled by the strength of his reactions to her. He wasn’t just in hot, determined pursuit; he wanted more from her than just her body and her compliance. He had never been remotely interested in any of his past lovers’ backgrounds or in trying to make sense of them.
He had taken what had been on offer and looked no further. Yes, so he had been lazy. He wasn’t lazy now.
‘Why is your mother hesitant about telling you that she has a boyfriend?’
Alice’s head whipped round and she looked at him, shocked by what he had just said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t know what you’re talking about. And I resent you poking your nose into my life, Gabriel!’ She yanked open the car door and sprang out of the car, wildly looking round for whatever Italian restaurant they were going to. It wouldn’t be hard to find. It wasn’t as though the village was bursting at the seams with chichi eating places.
It took her two seconds to spot the red-and-white-checked awning where, from memory, a corner shop used to be, tucked away on the corner and easy to miss, if it hadn’t been for the bright lights and the people inside.
‘Don’t run away from me!’
His hand snapped out, holding her firmly in place before she could flee to the safety of the crowded restaurant.
‘I’m not running away!’ No. She wasn’t. She was staring up into those deep, dark eyes and bitterly resenting his presence here in her treasured, private territory. ‘What did you mean when you said that...that mum had a boyfriend?’
Gabriel felt some of the tension leave him. She had kissed him. Hell, she had kissed him as hungrily as he had kissed her. And then, almost immediately, she had pushed him away. At least she wasn’t pushing him away now. It was something.
‘I’ll tell you over dinner. I take it that’s the restaurant over there?’ He began walking, pointedly not tucking her arm into his, although he wanted to.
This, Alice thought, was what lust felt like. In Paris, when they had been playing truant, when she had fallen madly and stupidly in love with him, he had shown affection in all sorts of small ways: holding hands, turning to kiss her, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear when the breeze was whipping it across her face...
But they weren’t playing truant now. They were back in England, and it was pretty clear that he might still want her, but those gestures of affection were no longer appropriate. His hands were very firmly in his jacket pockets and he was barely glancing in her direction as they walked briskly over to the restaurant.
‘So, tell me,’ Alice reluctantly demanded, once they were tucked away in the corner of the restaurant with two over-sized menus in front of them and a bottle of white wine on t
he way.
‘I’m sorry if I said something you would rather not have heard,’ Gabriel told her roughly. ‘This wasn’t a long, soul-searching conversation with your mother, Alice. She mentioned in passing that there was a man interested in her, someone she had started seeing recently, and then she laughed nervously and told me that she was working up the courage to tell you about him.’
Alice felt the sting of hurt prick the back of her eyes. She was lost for words. Her mother had given no indication of any boyfriend lurking backstage but then again, she thought with painful honesty, when was the last time she had encouraged confidences of that nature? No, she had held forth on men and the need to be careful with them; she had talked long and hard about them both learning from experience; she had bitterly and often harked back to her feckless father as a learning curve her mother should never forget...
That had never been fertile ground for her mother to tell her that she was involved with a man.
‘I see.’ Her face was stiff with the effort of trying not to cry. She wished he wouldn’t be gentle with her. She wished he would just be the single-minded bastard who only wanted one thing, whatever the cost. She stiffened as he reached across the table and laid his hand over hers.
‘I told her that I was sure you would be delighted to know that she had found someone, a companion...’ Because, for all her assertiveness, her spikiness, her boundless ability to speak whatever was on her mind and suffer the consequences, she had a big heart.
How did he know that? He just did.
‘Maybe I wouldn’t have been that delighted.’ She pulled her hand out from under his, instantly missing the warmth that had passed between them, and smiled at the waiter as he dribbled wine into Gabriel’s glass and went through the performance of asking whether it was all right.
As soon as her glass had been poured, she drank it and looked to Gabriel for a refill.
‘What do you mean?’
Alice threw the last of her privacy through the window. He had made so many inroads into her life that there didn’t seem much point hanging on to it. Fortified by the wine, she sighed and traced a little pattern on her empty white plate. Then she looked at him.
To Sin with the Tycoon Page 13